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Otavalo lynn a. meisch The green, fertile Otavalo Valley nestles in the Andes at 9,200 feet above sea level, 105 kilometers (65 miles) north of Quito (see Map 2). The town of Otavalo is the market and commercial center for some seventy-five small surrounding communities that are inhabited by indigenous people of the Otavalo ethnic group and by a small number of mestizos/whites. Beyond a doubt, the Otavalos are the most prosperous and best-known indigenous people in Ecuador and perhaps in all of South America because of their virtual monopoly of the cottage industry textile trade and associated tourism in Imbabura Province. Historical Background The Otavalos have long been weavers and merchants. The corregidor (magistrate ) for the Otavalo area in the late sixteenth century, Sancho de Paz Ponce de León, wrote in 1582 that “in the old days,” before Spanish rule, the local rulers (caciques) had control over all that their subjects possessed, “except the indigenous merchants (indios mercaderes), who did not have to serve their chieftains like the others, but only paid tribute in gold, mantles, and beads of white or red bone” (para. 15; [1897]:111; Meisch translation). The indigenous merchants were the famous mindalaes, the ancestors (metaphoric if not literal) of today’s traveling Otavalo merchants. The mindalaes operated mainly in the Quito Basin, in what is now Imbabura Province, and in the Pasto country to the north and seem to have specialized in the importation of lowland luxury goods (Salomon 1986: 104–105). Another early colonial document (1552) says CHAPTER 6 Costume in Imbabura Province Costume in Imbabura Province 131 that Otavalos “have all the barter business of all Quito and its outskirts, or most of it” (Salomon 1986: 202). Still another document (1662) says, “Besides dressing themselves with it [cotton], they make clothing and sell it, by which means they get gold for their tributes” (ibid.). The Otavalo area was given in encomienda to Rodrigo de Salazar, whose textile tribute list is cited in Chapter 3. He opened an obraje in Otavalo in 1563, using indigenous labor to build it (Ducasse 1985: 57). Salazar’s encomienda reverted to the Spanish Crown in 1581, and it became a Crown tributary area rather than being reassigned in encomienda, a slightly less oppressive arrangement for the indigenous people (Salomon 1981: 436). The Crown textile tribute list of 1612 cited in Chapter 3 is also extensive, however. Although several attempts to reform the merciless exploitation of the Otavalo obraje workers in the seventeenth century are known, all seem to have been temporary (Salomon 1981: 438). By 1623, the Otavalo obraje had become the most valuable in Ecuador. At its height in 1684, it employed 605 indigenous workers (Tyrer 1988: 102). Besides the one in Otavalo, a smaller Crown obraje was established in Peguche, 21/2 miles north of Otavalo, in 1626 (Rueda 1988: 78; Tyrer 1988: 100). While the obrajes were certainly responsible for introducing Spanish textile processes, they were also prominent in other parts of Ecuador, so they do not by themselves account for the weaving emphasis of the modern economy of the Otavalo area. Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa, the two young Spanish naval officers on the French La Condamine expedition, visited Imbabura in 1736 and reported that while the area was divided into haciendas, many of which had textile obrajes “because of the large number of Indians and their inclination to weaving ,” Otavalos were also doing a significant independent textile business. “For besides those [fabrics] that are made in the obrajes, free Indians or those who are not mitayos make many fabrics on their own account, such as plain cotton yardage (Lienzos de laTierra, or Tucuyos), carpets, bed hangings, damask bedspreads , all of cotton, sometimes white with different needlework techniques (labores), and others blue and white; but all are held in great estimation, both in the province of Quito and in other places where they are taken” (Juan and Ulloa 1748, lib. VI, cap. I, para. 730: 414–415; A. P. Rowe translation). William Bennett Stevenson, who was in the area in 1808, also notes that the natives were more inclined to weaving than to agriculture (1825, II:347–348). In the nineteenth century, although Ecuadorian textile manufacturing suffered as a result of the competition of imported English goods woven on steam-powered looms, several hacienda owners continued to operate textile factories in the Otavalo area. Stevenson noted that some of the large estates had four to five hundred Indians...

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